Build Me a Necromancer (3.5)

[Falconer]

“Wednesday, we spill the blood of virgin chickens. Thursday, we anoint ourselves in said blood. Friday is, of course, poker night.”
-Cultist of Shadow, Fable

Good evening, Playgrounders. There is a matter on which I would deeply appreciate your help and ideas. You see, there’s a character I have. His name is Sindri. Wave to the Playground, Sindri.
*Sindri waves*

Sindri is a character that I’m putting together for an upcoming long-shot campaign my DM is planning. We’re starting at level three, and will likely reach epic levels. To sum up my character in a few sentences, Sindri is a Chaotic Evil Lesser Aasimar, with a personality that I’d call a blend between Pinkie Pie (MLP), Aku (Samurai Jack), and Hank Scorpio (The Simpsons). In short, he’s probably about the most genuinely pleasant sociopath you’ll ever meet in your life.
You may have noticed that I didn’t include a class with the character. There is a reason for this.
You see, I would like Sindri to be a necromancer. I’ve looked at the Dread Necromancer, I’ve considered a cleric, I’ve looked at the Master of Shrouds PrC, and several others besides. I’ve consulted the Tome of Necromancy, the Revised Necromancer Handbook, and more. My DM and group are pretty relaxed about non-core, especially Homebrew, and are pretty much okay with anything so long as it doesn’t destroy the game.

This is where I turn to you, Playground.

I want your help. I want you to help me make Sindri the unusually-pleasant CE Lesser Aasimar into the most necrotic necromancer to ever romance a nec. Go forth, and consult The Book of Armaments the depths of the Homebrew Section! Look deep into your vast gaming experience! Help me as I travel across the land, searching far and wide for…

The PERFECT NECROMANCER BUILD! Bring it unto me, Playground! For Glory! For Chaos and Evil! For Narnia D&D!

So yeah, silliness aside, I was hoping for your thoughts on solid necromancy-themed builds, along with whatever other little tricks and treats you can come up with that can make my character a pretty solid solider of death and darkness.

Cheers,

Falconer

[Gavinfoxx]

Gladly! Just deposit $5 US in my PayPal account.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Gladly! Just deposit $5 US in my PayPal account.

Yeah, we're professionals! You can't expect us to do all the work ourselves, for free!

...Okay, we're enthusiasts.

[Gavinfoxx]

FYI, PM me if you want my paypal account info to send me money. ;)

[CodeRed]

Now see, you went all about this wrong. You actually asked for help like a normal, well-adjusted human being. Instead, you should have posted a build, said it was perfect, then let everyone critique it to hell into a good build.

But yeah. Necro is not difficult at all. Dread Necro 8 + pretty much anything else. DN 20 is a perfectly viable build and gets crazy amounts of strong undead. (Word of warning, if you're going the Pet Master type necro, go for a few strong undead over cannon fodder. Less rolls and headaches keeping track of it all.)

Spoiler

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In case the forum usual for sarcasm, blue text, wasn't enough, that is supposed to be sarcastic.

[Gavinfoxx]

An amount of 1 hd skeletons can be very very useful for mindless labor though!

[Bouregard]

Aku (Samurai Jack)

I thank you for showing me a most excellent cartoon.

As a reward I will advise you. Don't take the munchkinway.

quantity has a quality all its own

Instead of the umpteenth necromancer who runs around with just one or two big corpses go the army route. Nothing says more evil necromancer then a thousand skeletons waving crude weapons.

Think about it. If your GM lists the graveyards and mass graves before the taverns and blacksmith in his descriptions of the city, then your doing it right.

[Heatwizard]

DON'T leave Dread Necromancer at 8. One of the handbooks raved on about how great it was as a drop point; that handbook is wrong. Undead Mastery keys your HD limit off your DN class levels, rather then your caster level. It will probably double your control pool on the spot (if not more), letting your zombie force match a Cleric 16's (at least in hit dice), which is a fine drop point if you don't plan on going past 16(parentheses). But since you plan to reach epic, you'll be better off either leaving before 8 or committing to more DN levels.

Remember to ask your DM how comfortable he is with you raising(ha) an army. Throwing numbers at a problem is a sluggish but effective tool, and god knows being an adventurer will have you encountering plenty of 'volunteers', so it's worth finding out how available that option is to you.

Aside from that, there's not much. You've read all the handbooks, you know the classes and the feats. As far as I can tell, once the basics are squared away, the difference between a bad necromancer and an effective necromancer is more about wise 'recruitment' choices and smart tactics. Look into ways to hide your crowd, since there aren't a whole lot of things that'll wreck your reputation like someone finding out you boss skeletons around; eventually you'll be sufficiently dangerous as to get away with it, but at level 3 it's probably more trouble then it's worth. Off the top of my head, you could probably staff a couple of reasonably sized ships with your horde alone. Leaving 'em out at sea while you chat with townsfolk might be an option, and you'll have a small (eventually not small) armada at your command, so there's that.

[JoshuaZ]

DN20 works surprisingly well for most purposes. One issue that does come up here is what sort of necromancer do you want to be? DN is probably one of the better ones for large armies of undead although clerics do well also. If you want to do more of direct offense a wizard or a DN will go well.

If you are interested in having fun with undead armies, see if your DM will let you use Katarl's ultimate corpsecrafting which is quite a bit of fun and lets you have highly customized undead.

[moritheil]

Dread Necromancer, while not bad for the actual primary focus of the class (raising ambulatory corpses), lacks in terms of army buffs and other useful spells.

So I would ask: is it about making lots of shambling things while being as thematic as possible (DN is great at that), or is it about commanding an effective army of the undead and collecting an impressive collection of skulls (which I would suggest Cleric for, going into maybe Bone Knight or something)?

[Gavinfoxx]

You've mentioned the handbooks...

I'm just going to try and make sure you haven't missed one, okay? There are a LOT of necromancy handbooks!

http://community.wizards.com/go/thre...ancer_Handbook

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214212

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boa...php?topic=2242

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2733

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boa....php?topic=181

[Tamer Leon]

I always liked the Pale Master prestige class. The Undead graft and the cohort struck me as being really awesome, and you get some SLA's to go with it.